He's destroyed it twice so far, in Independence Day and in 2012. This summer, in White House Down, the disaster-philic director fully commits to the cause. We called him up and asked: What gives? Here's what we learned.
1. Actually, Roland Emmerich loves the White House.
"I love the White House!" he says.
2. But ever since Independence Day, he's been getting great feedback on blowing it up.
"Fox initially said, 'No way. You cannot blow up the White House in a teaser trailer.' And we said, 'Why not?' And they said, 'It's the White House!' And then we said, 'Look, let's just cut two teasers, one that culminates with the explosion of the White House and one without, and we'll see in testing.' And there was just such a big difference in testing results. It was probably the best testing teaser I ever had in my life."
3. The second time, in 2012, he didn't actually want to destroy the White House again.
"When we were writing 2012, at one point [co-writer] Harald Kloser said to me, 'So, what do we do about the White House?' And I said, 'Let's not destroy the White House again. It's just a cliché.' And he said to me, 'You know what? When we don't do it, they will ask why not.' He said you just need to figure out a way to destroy it in a way that is really cool. And then I came up with this idea of an aircraft carrier [the USS John F. Kennedy] crushing the White House. Which is kind of a surreal, cool image."
4. Strictly speaking, in White House Down, he mostly ravages the interior of the White House. Kind of like in Olympus Has Fallen. But different.
"If they'd put in North Koreans or Chinese or Arabs, I wouldn't have done the movie, because I would have said, 'That's jingoistic, and that's not going to happen, ever, because it's just too unrealistic.'"
**5. You should know, Roland Emmerich is really, really in demand when it comes to destroying things. **
"I was just in Asia, and in Taipei they have this 101- story building. And they asked me, 'Do you want to blow up our building?' And I said, 'I'm not, like, running around the world saying, "Ooh, I could blow up this; I could blow up that." ' I'm not Roland the Destroyer. For me, it has to be a symbol of something."
**6. Before Emmerich was a filmmaker, he wanted to be an architect. **
"I just love buildings!" he says.